


Satellite

by MyGrain



Category: Dracula (TV 2020)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Time Travel, vampire! agatha
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:28:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25627480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyGrain/pseuds/MyGrain
Summary: “Time is an illusion,” Agatha heard herself say as she sat up straight in bed, looking at mother superior.
Relationships: Dracula & Agatha Van Helsing, Dracula/Agatha Van Helsing
Comments: 17
Kudos: 78





	1. Chapter 1

_“Time is an illusion, lunchtime, doubly so."_

Agatha had seen it in a book that Zoe read, in those swathes of free time she had taken upon learning that she was dying. She had watched her favourite old movies again, gone through old photo albums, re-read her favourite books, busted open vhs tapes of her school recitals and ate her favourite terribly unhealthy foods.

Agatha, having taken a backseat at that time, had taken it all in with great interest. It was so curious to see the strides mankind had made, such fun. That line had made her laugh, made her think of lunch in the refectory and of stowing bread in the very large sleeves for a snack later in her workshop.

It was a lovely memory.

And as Agatha died in Zoe, now for a second time, those words kept resounding in her head. She did wonder why that kept coming to mind but the haze of Dracula’s opiate like bite sent it away, far away.

For the second time in her life (did the second time count as life?), Agatha found herself dying.

And, for the second time in her death, it didn’t quite stick.

“Time is an illusion,” Agatha heard herself say as she sat up straight in bed, looking at mother superior. Mother superior shot her a look before shaking her head, a smirk of amusement on her face. Agatha hadn’t seen it in so very long, she’d forgotten how expressive mother superior was. “Lunchtime, doubly so.” The rest of it slipped out of her mouth in barely a whisper. Mother superior and Sister Bernadette snorted under their breath.

“Well, you’ve missed two lunchtimes and a dinner in your illness, I’m afraid. Don’t know how many illusions that’ll break for you.”

“May I ask what is the date exactly?”

“March the tenth“

“And the year?” Sister Bernadette and Mother superior shared a worried look.

“1897” Sister Bernadette said, her voice impossibly soft.

Agatha blinked furiously. 10th March 1897, that was a good month or so before Jonathan Harker was in Dracula’s castle. Didn’t make sense for it to be a dream Dracula made her see, what significance could this date possibly have to him? How could he use something of significance to him alone to torture her, anyway?

“Why does it never make sense?!”

Honestly, even after figuring out that Dracula’s weaknesses were not, as it turned out, true, but a neurosis of his mind, the ridiculousness of it all still annoyed her. Why now? Why here? And why...

Why did the throbbing vein on Sister’s Berndette’s forehead, undulating with her anger, make Agatha feel so...

_Hungry_

* * *

In his castle Dracula awoke, pushing the heavy slabs of his ‘bed’ apart. He did not flounder even upon finding himself back, back to where it all began. A certain stillness had laid itself down upon his mind ever since drinking his fill of Zoe. 

_He was supposed to be dead._

Dracula snarled, a long terrifying wail leaving his mouth as the anger took over. Angry that he had been forced into making those realisations. Angry at having to confront his own fears. Angry that after all that malarkey he was still alive, what was the point of finally being ‘brave’ only to have those efforts end in failure? 

He swept into the lavishly decorated foyer of the castle, breaking things, throwing them around. Throwing a tantrum as his nannies had called it, as Agatha was sure to have spat at him. 

A childish, childish part of him wanted to scream that it wasn’t fair, as if he didn’t already know that about life and undeath. A look at his own hands and he knew exactly which point in time he was in. The letter had just arrived from England, confirming that they'd be sending their best, their finest, a young Jonathan Harker, to get his signature on the legal documents and explain the purchase of the English estate. 

_He was supposed to be dead!_

Dracula grappled with the remnants of Zoe that kept resurfacing. This was exactly why he didn’t like to get to know his meals before he snacked on them. He usually absorbed memories, skills, _stories_ . But when he knew them too well, he gave them far too much leeway. Zoe’s morality, her conviction, her emotions, her hopes they had mixed with his too, _too_ much. 

The more he shattered the opulent trinkets in his castle, the more he recalled.

Vlad of Wallachia. That was who he was.

He’d consider the flavours of her morals later, her intense feelings about sustainability, ethically sourced, eco-friendly, compostable etc, etc— at a later time. He wasn’t particularly hungry right now. Not for blood.

No, he craved for company. Unfortunately, there was at least a month to go before Johnny came. He’d have all that time to consider how he would change things this time around. Johnny was rather special to him. He had turned into a vampire so _quickly_ and still been so much of his own self. Remarkably like him, for all that Johnny didn’t accept it. How could he possibly not explore that further? The last time around he had seen Johnny simply as a repository of knowledge of England and its society, a meal to last him a month or more before he killed him. It was why he had taken on the appearance of an elderly, struggling Count Dracula when Johnny first arrived. No one ever wanted to offend the elderly by throwing accusations at them on the basis of a mere ‘I thought I saw something’. Why, they might suffer a stroke. 

No, he would certainly change things this time around with old Johnny blue eyes. But it was still such a long time to go for it all. Johnny probably hadn’t even boarded his ship yet.

Fortunately, his darling Agatha was but a few days’ walk away from him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll do my best to keep it historically accurate but will probably fuck up at some point, if you notice something please feel free to point it out. 
> 
> Thanks for the kudos and comments!
> 
> * * *

Sister Bernadette’s vein throbbed and Agatha could almost feel it in her throat, that dull thump. They were talking to her, waiting for her to respond but Agatha didn’t, too mesmerised by that sudden thought of blood. It was only when she felt the scrape of teeth against one another that she jerked out of the trance. 

She’d dropped fangs at the thought of blood.

“May I have a moment alone, please?” She asked quietly. Mother superior shot Sister Bernadette an asking look, which was answered with a face that might usually accompany a shrug. Mother superior patted her shoulder and they left, closing the door behind them. Agatha was alone at long last.

What she wanted to do was scream to the high heavens. But she could not. That dull thump of blood that her ears were fixated on, hadn’t gone too far, only a bit away from the closed door. She closed her eyes and grounded herself, forcing her hunger down and bringing up her ever burning curiosity to take its place. Agatha got up onto shaky feet and walked towards the mirror in the room, standing in front of it. She pulled off her coif and looked at her reflection carefully.

First, she met her own eyes. Her pupils weren’t particularly dilated, the iris was still its usual blue but her limbal ring was thinner than it usually was, practically non-existent. Her nose was nearly the same but the little discoloured spot from where she had forced a boil to burst in her teenage years was gone. Her skin was all like that, smoother under her hand than she was used to, thicker as well. She turned her attention to her ears and found the helix of her pinna more pointed than it usually was. The hair that curled around it was dark as it always was, no change there.

With growing trepidation she turned her attention to her mouth. It was ruddy red making her lips look far fuller than their usual thinness. She spent a while looking at them, dreading the next bit but couldn’t put it off any longer. 

Agatha opened her mouth. Sharper, longer canines, incisors not pointed perhaps, but thinner to the edge like a knife. It was the same with her premolars and molars, not quite to points but made for cutting, tearing, not chewing anymore.

No need to chew blood after all, teeth were needed only to cut open and then suckle.

She had _known_ since she was first caught in the trance of Sister Bernadette’s vein but now she could confirm it. 

Agatha was a vampire.

“Sister Agatha, are you quite all right in there?” Mother Superior asked through the door and Agatha jammed the coif back on. She looked herself over in the mirror and found the coif on perfectly, despite the haste with which she had put it on. She was sure her wimple would be a bit askew but it wasn’t. Strange that, she would have to study it later.

Agatha opened the door, letting mother superior and Sister Bernadette in.

“Glad to see you’ve gotten your liveliness back,” Mother superior said, “May I ask what all of this was about?” She asked, arms folded in silent stubbornness and Agatha decided to go with what came closest to the truth.

“I had a vision of the future. It was strange and unnerving, glass towers that were tall enough to go into the clouds, strange metal vehicles that could fly over continents in minutes, glass screens that could show the faces of the people who were on the other side of the world but could still be talked to. It was far beyond my wildest dreams and I cannot help but wonder if it was sent to me by our Lord or if it was just a feverish hallucination.”

Sister Bernadette’s eyebrows flew so far up they nearly disappeared. “That does sounds strange indeed.”

“I might sequester myself again, mother superior. I need to reason this out, understand what it means, _if_ it means anything.” Agatha said and as she expected, mother superior and Sister Bernadette sighed in relief.

Sister Agatha getting lost in one of her projects was a return to form, after all. A sign of normality after what had been some rather strange behaviour on her part.

Agatha was walked back to her workshop with careful instructions to leave the windows open to let in the air, not spend too much time at the desk and tell someone immediately if she felt the slightest bit faint. A large pitcher of water was put on the little desk next to the cot and with another concerned and fussing lecture Agatha was left to her work.

Alone again, finally, she sat down on at her table, picking up a large sheaf of blank papers. She folded them in half, punching little holes in the fold before threading them through with an old bit of scrap cloth to make a makeshift journal. She had others of course, but she could always do with more. She expected to do a lot more note taking now that she was herself a vampire. What better way to study them but by careful inspection of her own self?

She opened up a new one and began writing in it quickly. All her observations about her face and the visible changes in it that she’d made in the infirmary room, she noted down. Closing the door, she stripped off and observed, starting from the bottom up. Her toes were much the same although her toenails were more almond shaped than usual. The muscle in her legs was more defined, the scar on her knee from when she fell down and scraped herself up, faded. It was the same for the rest of her body, slightly more muscle than usual, perhaps to aid in the extraordinary strengths of feat vampires accomplished. The more she looked the less differences she found, it was simply like she had indulged in more physical labour than her usual practice of sitting down to read and write for hours on end, she was even _breathing_ , although whether it was from habit or a need for air she didn’t know yet. The only other major difference was that her nails were longer and sharper, although they didn’t have the grey tinge to them that Dracula’s did.

Was it a normal difference, the way that different people had differently coloured nails? Was it a gender difference? Or was it an age related difference given how ‘young’ a vampire she was? Was it an influence of diet?

It would have to be observed at a later point. Perhaps Dracula’s ‘brides’ could provide a comparison for her to see. Agatha jotted it down in her book before putting it down again. She wanted to test her senses— just how _did_ she hear the sound of Sister Bernadette’s pulse? — but it wasn’t a risk she could willingly take, not when she was so close to so many others. She was _terrified_ of losing herself to a frenzy if she thought about blood too much, and was choosing to ignore it for now. Logically speaking there must be someone in the convent or the surrounding who was bleeding, and she didn’t want to attune herself to such a thing just yet. Once she was away from the city, when no people were near, she would try again.

Besides, there were other things to check. She walked to the walls of the room and put a hand up on it. Dracula seemed to be able to crawl on vertical walls as if they were the floor, no fear or thought of falling. The ceilings of her room weren’t too high so if she fell it wouldn’t be from too far up a height.

As if the very thought of climbing up it had pushed her body into doing so, she found herself hanging upside down off the ceiling in a second. Speed, she had forgotten about that. It was most interesting. A knocking sound broke her out of her thoughts and she fell onto the floor landing on her two feet with barely a thump, as if able to levitate. “Sister Agatha?” A voice said and she realised she was still quite naked and threw on her habit quickly, opening the door.

“Ah, Sister Rosa, I didn’t realise,” So hyperawareness wasn’t a thing she’d developed. Not yet at least.

“Mother superior said that you would be sequestering yourself. You should have a good meal, you’ve only just woken up,” Sister Rosa said worriedly and Agatha noticed the filled tray Sister Rosa carried with her. She was always so nice and kind especially to Agatha who had a strange reputation to say the least.

When the wolves had torn them apart, Agatha had known exactly when Sister Rosa had screamed and died. Sister Bernadette had been out that day, her medical expertise had been asked for by a woman in town. She would have been the only one to survive them.

“Thank you.” Agatha said and tried to put her full feeling behind it. Thank you for being kind. Thank you for believing me when I talked about the occult. Thank you for playing along with so many of my odd ‘projects’.

She would have to leave soon. Surrounded by her fellow Sisters, alive (alive!) and well again, she didn't want to bring ruin upon them once more. They had been killed by the will of a voracious vampire before, and well, she wasn’t quite at that point yet, didn’t have the finesse Dracula wielded but Agatha had always been a fast learner. The hunger, much to her surprise, wasn’t quite overbearing. She did have an urge to feed, that was true but it was just hunger _._ And well, she had lived through famines in her youth, hunger didn’t quite compare to that aching feeling of starvation, which was also a feeling she had mastered.

But while it was bearable enough now it could change, overpower her. She worried that they would hesitate to fight against her. It was the familiarity between Jonathan and Mina that had proven to be their weakness, she didn’t want her fellow sisters’ kindness to be their undoing.

Besides, Agatha had so much to do. Jonathan Harker and Mina deserved better than the fate they had been given the first time around.

And who better to challenge Dracula then one of his own kind?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still finding Dracula's voice so hopefully writing in his pov should get easier for me and better to read for everyone over the next few chapters. Thank you all for the kudos and comments, they are much appreciated and I hope this chapter finds you well.
> 
> * * *

Dracula’d had a busy, busy day cleaning house in preparation for Jonathan and Agatha.

He’d willingly confess that perhaps he had gone a bit overboard with terrorising Jonathan. It had been the first time in decades he’d had company that wasn’t local and thus fully in the know of the legends surrounding Dracula, so he’d had _far_ too much fun at Jonathan’s expense.

Now that he thought about it, maybe the baby had been a step too far.

So to correct things, make his draughty undead and vampire filled home somewhat more hospitable to the squishy but immeasurably interesting humans who’d soon be brought in, he set about clearing out the castle. Early in the day, once the sun was well and truly up in the sky, he had dragged the boxes filled with his undead friends, still nailed shut, to the usually heavily padlocked ballroom. It was a lovely room with mirrors placed strategically to reflect the moonlight and candles to light up the whole room, with high ceilings, and very large windows. One by one, he removed the nails from the boxes and sat down to see what would happen. Zoe (Agatha?) had shown that he wasn’t affected by sunlight but that was _him_ , Dracula, prince among vampires. He already knew he was unique in ways that couldn’t be explained. He needed to know if this was yet another thing unique to him and it would be easier to clean the mess in the ballroom than the others.

The undead crawled out of the boxes, Petruvio and his wife at the forefront, unfolding themselves yelling ‘Omoar ma’ as they always did. They were more coherent than most of the other undead, Dracula had seen that before as well. Even when he was alive, his wife only came closer to Petruvio, she didn’t try to feed on him as she did with the others. As if some semblance of her intellect had remained. So, he was most interested to see what the couple would do faced with the sun and only wished he had a goblet of blood to drink as he observed.

Habits had made Dracula reluctant to stand in the sun, still getting used to it all. Instead, he sat on a chaise lounge in the gallery above covered in shadow, only his shoed foot stretching into the sunlight, and watched. His attention was split between watching the undead navigate the pools of shadow and sun that was their new environment, and feeling the tingly warmth on his foot.

The undead walked around the room, flinching away from light completely, as if navigating a maze of shadows and light. They were limited to the room, Dracula had made sure of that with the doors locked and barred on both sides. Petruvio and his wife hadn’t moved nearly as much as the rest had done, choosing to stay closer to their boxes, but the shuffling of another undead pushed a box and Petruvio arm was jostled into the sun.

It burst into flames before falling off and turning to ashes, the process taking but a few seconds. There was silence after that, as the ‘Omoar ma’ of the shuffling corpses stopped.

“How fascinating,” Dracula wondered if it was the sudden arousal of survival instincts that caused this quiet? They’d been shouting to be killed for so long now, it was fairly grating. Perhaps seeing themselves nearly die was proving to be the turning point?

And then Petruvio and his wife walked into the sunlight, their steps in sync. They both burst into flames all over and within seconds nothing but ash remained of them. The undead followed then, all but running in the way they had rushed after Jonathan that day in the castle, and hurtled themselves into the light, one by one turning to ash.

Deep in thought Dracula sat, steepling his hands and tapping them against his mouth absently. This clear difference between the undead and him was making him think. His brides were more sophisticated than this lot, closer to him in nature than the undead had been. They retained their ability to think, to plan, learnt from the blood of those they fed on. Their hunger made them stupid, unfortunately. One of his previous brides— one he had to kill off, much to his regret— had glutted herself on an entire town and still been thirsty for more. Every bride he’d ever made had been much the same and while it had been entertaining at first, it got old very quickly.

The most important difference between them and the undead, was that they still wanted to live— for a given meaning of the word.

But, Jonathan had been different. Wasn’t hungry the way the brides were, was still too much of the person he was before being turned. Although, given that he couldn’t remember Mina’s face maybe that would have changed later?

Brave man. Pity his bride had gotten to him and bled him nearly dry. Thinking of his brides reminded him that he needed to get rid of them too so up the stairs he climbed to get to that secret place where he kept them. The youngest one, the one who’d managed to escape her box to feed on Johnny was first up. Dracula tossed her into the sunlight and watched her stay in it unscathed, muttering on and on about the sun being pretty. Feeling strangely possessive—of the sun of course, not the silly chit of a bride—he staked her through the heart again. Then he brought the other two down as well. His eldest bride wasn’t impacted by the sun either, she had to be staked as well, but the middle one, that one had been strange. Where her sisters had been unphased by the sun, she burst into flame and turned to ash the way the undead did.

Dracula remembered turning her. The others, he had fed off for a long time before killing them but that one he hadn’t. He’d only tasted her blood once, with his eldest bride taking a sip as well, before she killed herself in a fit and then returned, a ravenous thing.

He would have to conduct further experiments. For now, he simply set the two staked corpses on fire before sweeping their ashes away and climbing the stairs to the roof. Dracula stood there, the sun beating down upon him. This early in spring she didn’t set behind the second peak, rather she set in the valley between the first and the second.

The sun disappeared behind the peak but her afterglow remained, lighting up the peaks with a warm fiery luminescence. Dracula continued staring in that direction and felt that same tugging sensation he had felt when Jonathan had fallen into the river and Dracula had begun his long journey after ‘recovering’ from his exposure to the sun. 

It felt different this time around. Stronger, oddly enough, and it came from the west in the direction Budapest lied in. The first time around Johnny had been led on a long and constantly shifting journey as he floated down rivers to the sea before being brought to Agatha. Dracula had followed this ever moving beacon calling to him to all the way to the convent where it finally rested. Sometimes he had seen flashes from the other side of the connection, seen fishes swimming above him, nets surrounding him, and finally a stark austere room.

This time, he saw what looked like an infirmary, and then a brief flash of his darling Agatha with her white coif taken off, mouth pursed in contemplation. 

Agatha had such a curious way of looking at everyone. Defiant, laughing, measuring, all at once. It was why he had known immediately when Agatha was speaking to him using Zoe’s face and mouth. He could see that smirk that Agatha always seemed to be on the verge of, instead of Zoe’s downturned disapproval. Even near death on the Demeter, Agatha had always been defiant, laughing with her eyes as if amused by the world. It had been the best match Dracula had ever played.

She looked a bit different in the flash of her image but he couldn’t quite tell how. The images stopped soon but the tugging sensation remained. Dracula walked to the battlement where Jonathan had stood once, looking down the precipice to the same river Johnny boy must have seen and eventually been swept away in. Leaning over Dracula dropped down, a long, long way, landing on both feet on the riverbank before crossing over to the other in a flash and walking up the hill, soon finding the cleared path in the snow that the stagecoaches usually took. He’d follow the road, taking his own sweet time for now, it would be most interesting to see what the town he usually stole his victims from looked like in the day.

Besides, it was sure to be truly fun to watch their dawning realisation that the count had left his castle and descended upon them when the sun was still up. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you for the comments and kudos, they nourish my brain cells well.
> 
> * * *

Once night descended and everyone was asleep, Agatha left her workshop. It was pitch dark with no candles lit, and yet somehow Agatha could see with utter clarity. She wanted to grab her journal again and write it down, but she did have work to do. She crept into the storeroom where the belongings of their current novitiates were kept and with an apology to their lord for sinning, she rummaged through them all and picked up bits and bob she would need. A couple of dresses and underthings, petticoats, a bag, a coat, a coin purse etc. By the end of it, she was sure she had more possessions in her arms than she’d had in the last fifteen years put together. 

But once ensconced in her workshop again, she realised that wasn’t quite true. She filled the bag with her journals, the extra dresses, inkwells, quills, pens, matches, everything she could think to need when travelling, and yet her workshop was still quite full. The cages with the bats, the glass jars of flies, the remnants of her study of the occult. There were all sorts of talismans and apotropaic artefacts: vials of holy water, silver needles, steel needles, stakes, carvings on pieces of hawthorn and ash, wolfsbane and charms aplenty. Some of these things she took with her, if only because it would keep suspicion off her, but mostly because she wanted to experiment with them, see to what extent they were true.

Soon she was ready to leave. Dressed in a white dress with red embroidery and layers upon layers, vest, shawl, apron and more, she felt like an imposter. She tugged at her collar, the sensation of the threads of the embroidery there felt oddly rough against her skin. It was of a material softer than her wimple and guimpe, but made her feel terrible.

Vows were not meant to be broken. And here she was breaking hers, and doing it willingly. It made her feel sick, had her stomach churning but...

But she wasn’t even  _ human _ anymore. What right did she have to this sacred place, let alone its uniform?

So she crept away, taking to the walls at some times to make sure she wasn’t seen and then took the road she knew led out of the city and began walking. The moon had barely even moved in the sky before Agatha was out of Budapest. A ten minute walk, and she was already out of the city’s bounds, on roads that weren’t nearly as well maintained as the ones inside the city. She didn’t turn back to look, knowing too well that she would be looking for the spires of the convent.

Her sisters would be worried but she left them a note. It wasn’t much of one to be honest. She hadn’t explained why she was leaving or anything of the sort. All she’d written was ‘Stakes are the only things that work, if I appear again you might have to use one. God bless.’

She still couldn’t bring herself to write down that she was a vampire just yet. Implying it was the only thing she would do and even that was only because the thought of her sisters being in danger because of her, gave her the strength to do so.

Jonathan Harker had been an excellent chronicler before his many encounters with Count Dracula and subsequent death and undeath. Before Dracula’s influence had him writing nothing more than ‘Dracula is God, Dracula must be obeyed’ over and over again, his letters to Mina Harker had recorded his journey from Exeter to London and then eastward. Agatha knew there was a letter from the count that would be awaiting Jonathan’s arrival at Bistritz, from where he was to take a stage coach to Borgo Pass. Prior to that he had practically no communication with Dracula. She could intercept him at nearly any point in his journey, Munich, Vienna, even Paris or Calais. London would be difficult, she only knew it through Zoey’s eyes. And she had time, plenty of it.

Agatha had a plan in mind, a simple one that only required her presenting herself as Dracula’s staff member to Jonathan once he arrived on the continent and leading him as far away from the castle as she could without raising suspicion. But carrying it out would require her to blend in and be able to lie. For that she needed to learn control, control over her hunger, control over her body so as to not betray her true nature. She had to get away, as far away from people as she could, master her senses and their appearance before she could so much as think of looking Jonathan Harker in the eye. He had been subject to the whimsy of a vampire before, she would not put him through it again.

So, she kept on walking until she reached the mountains, only it didn’t take her nearly as long as it should. It made her think and while she was in the forest, she made to measure her pace. Using her claw like nails to make a mark in one tree, she counted to ten in her mind, walking the whole time. She marked the tree closest and mapped the distance in between the two only to be astonished upon realising she had covered more than a hundred meters in that tiny span of time.

Speed, as she kept forgetting. Dracula tended to loom, using his stature as a tool to intimidate so that she thought of him as being strong rather than fast. But she would have to learn to control it, if she walked like this in cities, in crowds, it would raise quite a few eyebrows. Well, actually, it would probably earn a lot of screaming and shouting that would soon have even more people gawking at the strange sight.

Absently she considered joining a circus, one of those shows about human oddities but dismissed the thought.

Instead she climbed ever higher up the mountain. There was a rocky outcrop mentioned by many a traveller. They talked of glowing blue flames that lit up and faded again, of people disappearing the closer they got to them, of bits and pieces of human corpses strewn about, found only in the day. Agatha had investigated the same and found that only the blue flames were true, and it only occurred on St George’s night, no other time. It was strange yes, but not particularly harmful, not the way some other places were.

But the rumours would keep people away and provide her with a safe space in which to learn to pretend to be human.

Agatha settled her things on a nice flat rock that made for a good seat, turning it into an impromptu desk. Her journal was ready to be written in, inkwell and quill ready as well. She tied a dark scrap of cloth over her eyes and mouth, leaving only her ears open to the elements and concentrated.

After all, when a sense is dulled the others work to compensate for it. What better way to test the limitations and lack thereof of a sense than that? Agatha already had some bit of experience with her vampiric hearing, thinking back to when she heard the pulse hammer away in Sister Bernadette, after all.

In the convent it had been the thought of climbing the wall that had propelled her body to do that and Agatha hoped it would work like that once more, instinct bypassing her overly logical mind to just  _ do  _ what needed to be done.

Agatha took a deep breath and simply thought of the thump of Sister Bernadette’s blood. It worked far better than the wall climbing incident because Agatha was thrown onto her back from the sheer sensory overload. She could hear so, so much, what felt like everything there was to hear. The sound of flies, of the rustle of feathers as birds moved, of the buzz of dragonflies, the sinuous movement of water around reeds and stones, the croak of frogs, the swoop of hundreds of bat wings, of leaves under many paws, and over all of that, she heard the heartbeats of each and every one of those that had one. 

She was drowning in noise, couldn’t breathe couldn’t—

Suddenly it stopped. She could hear two breaths, very different from one another, one a calm, steady noise, the other a wet sounding soft thing. 

Humans, she realised. Absently her mind catalogued the fact that her hearing fixated on humans above all else, but the rest of her was still listening, latching on to their sounds. Soon she could hear the thump of two hearts, one rapid and fluttery, the other steady. She could guess easily enough which breath belonged to which heart and soon she heard the bits of sound surrounding the two. The rustle of fabric, the sound of hooves, the snorting of a horse. It neighed and she heard the squeak of leather and understood that it must have been brought to a halt. The thud of a person dismounting was followed by heavy steps. Another rustle of fabrics and a man’s amused sounding whisper in Hungarian,  _ “I’ll see you in a few days.” _

Agatha heard him leave, get onto the horse and ride off but the other person, the one with the wet sounding breaths and fast heartbeat was still there.

As if in a trance, not unlike the strange sensations in the dreams Dracula shared with her, Agatha found her feet moving, the scrap of cloth wrapped around her face ripped off. The hypnotic sound of the heartbeat called out to her and she walked to it, only to stop when she finally saw the person.

It was a young woman, lying on the ground. The reason for the wet sound of her breath became clear as even from a good distance away, Agatha could smell and see the blood. Within seconds Agatha found herself looming over the young woman who looked at her, dazed and in pain. Not a sound left her and the painful looking bruise on her neck told Agatha why, along  with the many slashes littering the woman’s body.

There was no chance this woman would survive. Perhaps if it was a century and some years later she might, but in 1897, there was no chance of it.

‘She’s dying anyway,’ A silky voice that sounded too much like her own self and not at all like Dracula said, ‘Why not just feed on her and take away her pain?’

Her fangs had dropped. Her mouth was salivating. The smell of the woman’s blood was a heady thing and Agatha wanted to  _ gorge _ herself on it.

She didn’t.

It hadn’t been that long for Agatha. She remembered being fed on. More importantly, she remembered making the choice to  _ let _ Dracula feed on her.

That choice had made all the difference to her. It meant that even in her dying moments, there was a meaning, there was a reason to it all. She wanted to give this woman the same choice.

But how? The woman couldn’t talk, not without putting herself through even more pain than she already was in. Besides, obtaining her consent would require her to be of sound mind and the degree of pain this woman was experiencing did not make that the case.

_ “Blood is lives” _

_ “ _ _ Perhaps stories flow in our veins, if you know how to read them.” _

Agatha could try it. Try to read the stories in the woman’s blood, flowing out of her as it was. Like those twisted little chess dreams she shared with Dracula, or those visions he showed his victims.

Agatha took a deep breath, breathed in all that blood. It did not smell as blood usually did to her, of rot and iron. It smelled instead like a wine might. Agatha could smell paprika, oak, peat, smoke,  _ Anna _

“Anna, is that your name?” The woman’s chin did a little jerk down confirming it and Agatha knew she was on the right track. She closed her eyes and looked deeper, looking for the story.

Agatha’s eyes opened to the same bit of forest she’d been in and she thought she’d failed. But then she noticed that Anna was there in front of her, dishevelled, bleeding, hurting but perfectly capable of talking given the snarled out “Who are you?” Agatha got. It was a dream, she realised, not unlike the ones Dracula had shared with her.

“I am Sister Agatha Van-“ no, not a sister anymore. An unholy creature. “I’m Agatha Van Helsing. I am a vampire.”

“A vampire?” Anna scoffed and it had Agatha nearly giggling. She’d been so consumed by her search for Dracula, for the occult, and found so many with stories that she’d forgotten that there were just as many who thought vampires to be a mere fairytale.

Or perhaps, Agatha thought eyeing the bruises and wounds, she usually had experience with a rather different sort of monster than her.

Maybe that was why Agatha was so obsessed with the occult, with Dracula. They were condemned for their existence as twisted creatures, while the monsters within humans could walk into any church and ask for forgiveness and be given it.

But Anna was waiting, so Agatha shrugged, snapping herself out of her own thoughts. “You’re dying. And bleeding too which is making me feel hungry. I thought to ask you if I could feed on you given that it could also take away the pain you’re in.”

Anna startled and only then noticed her injuries. “I remember now—” She started shaking but resolutely ignored it, turning her attention to Agatha instead. “What kind of vampire asks for permission?”

“It’s a long story.” Agatha said but told her all of it anyway. It felt good to say it to someone else, and made her feel less insane.

“That’s insane.” Anna said, bluntly and Agatha couldn’t help but laugh. It prompted a grin on Anna and that was when Agatha realised how incredibly young she was. Barely in the middle of her twenties. The grin dropped as Anna contemplated something. Agatha could vaguely tell what she was thinking of, could get flashes of the girl’s emotions. She felt like if she tried, she could focus and hone in on them until even those thoughts weren’t a mystery but decided not to, choosing instead to think of it as a line  _ Dracula _ would cross, not her. “So, you want to drink my blood.”

“ ‘Want’ is not quite the word to use, I would much prefer to subsist on paprika hendl for the rest of my life. However, what I feel hungry for seems to be human blood. It is a hunger I seem to be able to control, should you say no, I will not feed on you.”

“But you’ll have to feed sometime or another.”

Agatha shrugged, “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. With Dracula it seemed to be an addiction, with his brides, from the sound of it, it was hunger, with Jonathan it had been more subtle than that even. So, perhaps I will never need to feed.”

“Or, you might refuse to feed and then starve yourself to the point of madness at which point you could slaughter villages.”

“The possibility has crossed my mind.”

Agatha needed to have measures against herself at the ready. Stakes, poisoned blood, whatever it took.

“Alright then.” Anna said and Agatha broke out of her thoughts. “You can feed on me on two conditions.”

“Conditions?”

“First that you will stake me through once you’re done feeding.”

Of course, Agatha hadn’t even thought about that. If Dracula’s bite could turn his victims into vampires, her own had the potential to do the same. If she was ever to feed on persons, this was a habit she would have to inculcate. “Done.”

“The second one might be more difficult for you. You were a sister once.” Anna hesitated. Agatha could almost taste her reluctance warring with a growing righteous anger.

“But what is it?”

“I want you to kill my husband.”

Agatha couldn’t say she’d never considered murder before. Or even that it had been a rarity for her. Dreams were a haven where she could sin without consequence, and Agatha dreamt a lot. Murder was easy enough to do, but she still hesitated. Perhaps part of it was that murder had never seemed like justice. After all her study of the occult, Agatha had come to view death as a release, not as punishment.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Anna continued, “In doing so you’ll be saving someone.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My husband is an important man, the only doctor around for miles. He has this way about him, not to mention a fair bit of blackmail on anyone important. No one would dare say no to him. Definitely not the baker whose pretty and very young niece has just lost her parents and come to stay with her uncle and his wife. He owes my husband for saving his life last year when he nearly drowned.”

“Wait, your husband did this to you?” Agatha wasn’t shocked in particular. There had been many women who had sought sanctuary in the convent while on the run from their husbands, but she needed to make sure.

“He’s been looking to get rid of me for a while. I’m wilful and defiant, but more importantly, I’m getting a bit too old.”

Anna said old but Agatha couldn’t help but think of her a child yet, Mina was barely a few years older surely. “Anna, how old are you?”

“Twenty one. I’ve been married to him for seven years. His wife before me was with him for a little less than that, since she was fifteen. She was nice. There was a case of food poisoning in their house that apparently only killed her while leaving him and all the servants who ate the same meals, untouched. ”

It surprised Agatha that she still had the capacity to be shocked by human behaviour anymore, but she did. She believed Anna though, hadn’t she heard the callous amusement in the man’s voice as Anna was left there, bleeding to death? There were times when murder was a necessary evil.

A necessary evil, she liked the thought of that. That she, a vampire could still be of some service to humanity.

“Are you quite sure this is what you want?” She asked of Anna. “Think about it carefully. I could incapacitate him instead, leave him alive to suffer.”

“No, he killed them, killed me. I want him dead. And then I want him staked through to make sure he stays that way.” Anna spat out and Agatha considered.

“Very well, we have an agreement.”

Anna smiled, placing her bloody hand in hers and the next thing Agatha knew, she was awake with her mouth clamped around Anna’s neck, guzzling down blood by the pint. Anna’s memories flooded her mind but Agatha shoved them to the back, too intent on the sudden feeling of satiation.

She felt changed, invigorated like never before, every inch of her body electric with sensation. Absently, she could hear wolves approach and howl into the night, bats congregating around them. She ignored it all, suckling to the very last drop until under her hands, Anna’s body grew cold and unmoving.

When she was done she stared at Anna’s corpse for a while, as her memories swirled about in her head. The sun was rising and it illuminated the smile on Anna’s face. Agatha remembered the ‘dream’ Anna had while being fed on. It was simple, just a walk through the woods, playing hide and seek, gathering flowers. Just her alone, peaceful and safe.

Agatha burst into tears.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dracula's pov is much more difficult to write, he uses so many puns and I'm quite shit at that sort of thing so this is inevitably rather lacking. I have also taken a fair few things about travelling from Bram Stoker's book because figuring out travelling that part of the continent in 1897 gave me a headache, so if you get a feeling of deja vu, it's probably from that.
> 
> As always, thank you for your comments and kudos, they water my plants.
> 
> * * *

It was dawn, the rising sun lighting the red roofs of the houses in town with a pretty orange, when Dracula suddenly stopped midstep on the paved road in. His heart was beating a wild tune, and he looked down at his own self as if he could learn to see through the layers of wool and silk, muscle and bone to see it there. A strange sensation came over him, as if he was in a waking dream, a haze of that languor after a good meal, overlaid with a strange sense of beautiful tragedy.

He looked up to find himself in a forest, pretty and green, large and old oaks and beech spaced out around him, letting the sunlight dapple through their canopy. And there at the base of one such lush tree, two women. One was dead, clearly so and the other, bent over her, her back to him seemed so familiar with the slender tall frame and dark hair, the tightly pulled shoulders shaking with sobs…

Were it not for the lack of her usual blue and white habit, Dracula might think her to be Agatha.

“Darling-“ he couldn’t help but call out and all but reeled in shock as the woman turned around.

“You?! What are you doing here?” Agatha whispered, in as much shock as himself as he saw the blood staining her face, the point of the canine showing from under the lip, as if she had been  _ feeding _ .

He was dreaming his deepest, darkest wish, Dracula realised. Agatha but as a vampire, one who could stay by his side forever. And like all dreams, as he went to touch it, it disappeared and he was once again out of the forest and on the road. He shook off the lingering haze and set off once more.

As he walked into town, Dracula considered the idea. It wasn’t new really, the thought of Agatha as a vampire, as his bride. On the beach those many years in the future, when he found out it was a doppelganger of Agatha that he was facing rather than her he had been rather disappointed. In that second where he thought it was her, he had been elated at the thought that while he had laid in that box for a century, Agatha had awoken and drifted ashore to make herself a life of her own anew, the way he had done four hundred years ago when he had awoken, turned.

The idea had taken his breath away. The crushing disappointment of learning that Agatha had died, had never returned the way Jonathan did, had hurt for all that he wouldn’t admit it.

Another reason to find Dr Sharma once more. Perhaps he could find another way to keep her with him beyond the grave. Shaking off the melancholy of Agatha’s impending death, Dracula forced himself to focus on the sunlight instead. Humming a pretty little ditty, he walked into the local inn, a small place he had been known to pick up his ‘meals’ from.

The innkeeper greeted him and made excuses, busy dealing with the many passengers on the stagecoach which had just stopped by and directed his daughter to attend to Dracula instead. Dracula remembered her, from a decade or so ago, when he’d picked up a beautiful young Flemish poet making his way through the carpathians in search of inspiration. His blood had tasted of existential fear, atheism hiding a deeply spiritual heart, and a deep appreciation for the foaming waters of the sea. This child had seen Dracula carrying the man’s body out the door and called for help, and now stood in front of him, all grown up. He wondered if perhaps she remembered him as well.

She shot him a bright and incredibly fake smile, directing him to the parlour, “My father will be with you in just a moment,” She said softly in hesitant English. She moved about the room and pushed open the heavy drapes, opening the window. 

From where he was standing near the doorway, Dracula moved forward. Only when he sat down right in front of a window with sunlight streaming over him did she relax. Clever girl, she remembered him then. Not well enough to recognise but well enough to be cautious.If Dracula had still believed in his delusion that the sun would burn him, it would very well have exposed him and saved them for the day.

What a pity he’d outgrown his fear.

“Would you happen to know if I could book passage on a stagecoach to Budapest?” He asked the girl before she could scurry off.

“Budapest?”

“A colleague of mine stays there,” Dracula wanted to see how well he could deceive this child, wanted to see just how much of an impression he’d made on the chit. It was good to be understood but Agatha wasn’t here so he’d settle for being seen. “So sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Nathan Yates.”

He was too close to his castle to use his own name the way he did in the Demeter, nor by his usual alias of Balaur when he was still in Romania, it was far too obvious. Besides, being ‘Nathan Yates’ allowed him to plant the seeds of the tale he was going to weave for Agatha. It was the name of Agatha’s ‘detective acquaintance in London’. His idea was to pretend to be him, and drop in on Agatha at the convent to meet her as her ‘friend’.

“Colleague?” The innkeeper’s daughter said, as if tasting the word on her tongue. As if the idea of him working was an anathema. Given the fine cut of his clothes though, he supposed it was to be expected that he was a gentleman of leisure. 

“I do that good an impression of a nobleman, do I?” He laughed, albeit for different reasons. He could taste her scepticism, the girl hadn’t bought into his facade anymore than Jonathan had bought his lies. “I’m a detective.” He said in a conspiratorial tone and this is the bait that lures her in. He could see she wanted to ask something but a clatter distracted her and she scurried off instead.

A few minutes later, she entered the room again, this time trailing behind her father. 

“Herr Englishman, you want to take a coach to Budapest?” Her father said.

“Ah, yes. And perhaps you might be able to recommend an inn as well? I’m afraid I don’t know the area that well and it would be rather draining to run around a city looking for a decent place.”

“I can, of course, in fact, my son, he runs a fine little place in the city. But the stagecoach, if you want to take it to Budapest it will take much longer. There is one coming in tomorrow, it can take you to Bistritz, and then a train for the rest of the journey. The coach is cheaper, of course but it will take much longer.”

“The train does make more sense,” Dracula was a little bit disappointed. It would have been fun to reenact the Demeter with the passengers on the stage coach but getting to Agatha as quick as possible would be far more fun. He could stop for a nibble nearby when waiting for the train, the station was sure to have some interesting folk. 

He made arrangements with the innkeeper to stay the night there and be off on the coach next morning, the man promising to get him the best seat on it.

The daughter however, hung back.

“My apologies, I was under the impression you’d be boarding with your colleague?”

“A convent might not be the ideal place to board”

“Not St Mary’s convent?”

“How did you know?”

“Might I ask Mr Yates, if your colleague is Sister Agatha? Agatha van helsing?”

“You know her?” What a small world they lived in.

“Sister Agatha is well versed in the occult and its mysteries. I spoke to her once in my youth regarding certain local legends.” She elaborated and Dracula couldn’t help the smile blooming on his face. How long had Agatha been chasing him?

“She asked you about Count Dracula didn’t she?” He leaned forward, rather excited to know. He hadn’t seen this in her blood, so busy looking for her weaknesses. “Tell me, did she do that thing she does of being insulting just to get you to talk?”

She shot him a strange look. “No, she gave me sweets.”

“Ah of course, you were a child,” He couldn’t wait to hear her voice again, calling him all sorts of names just to catalogue his reaction to them. Maybe he’d have to work up to it as Nathan Yates, but no matter. He would get his rude little nun back one way or another.

“Sister Agatha is an unusual nun but but she is still a woman of virtue,”

“Well of course, she is. But an incredible mind really, most wonderful to engage with.” No one had come closer to killing him, and no one had possessed their kin just to attempt to finish their work the way she had. There was so much dedication in her, truly, Johnny had it too but he was hampered by his sense of honor and duty, his urge to save people. Agatha would let people die if it meant taking him down with them, and mourn them later. It was what made her so enchanting, that ruthless utilitarian mind with that constantly fought against a rigid set of rules and beliefs.

“That’s not what I mean,” She swallowed wetting dry lips, taking a moment to gather her thoughts before speaking once again, “Sister Agatha is given to our lord. I would not that you keep hope where there is none.” She said and left, as if afraid of how he would react.

He had designs on Agatha, that was true, but the girl seemed to think they were  _ romantic  _ in nature, cautioning him against it. He let that idea seattle over him like a shroud, another layer to the ‘Nathan’ who was to meet Agatha. 

But it made him think. 

When he fed off people, they dreamed a lovely dream, often sexual in nature, or of a happy future with their beloved ones, whatever it was that was their life’s passion. Agatha had dreamed of her workshop, of books and writing, of hours spent meditating on the nature of evil. It was why he had told her such a lovely long story, after all, he knew nothing would make her happier, arouse the passion in her quite like hearing of his experiences on the Demeter. A tale of men and their conflict with evil was exactly what she wanted to hear, although she wasn’t fond of the ending perhaps.

In the moment when Dracula brought forth her deepest darkest passions, she had thought of him. 

And wasn’t that flattering?


End file.
